Social Media Marketing

Maybe you’ve heard about blogging, but you’re unsure how a blog might benefit your business. If you’ve already got a website for your business, having a blog can help in a number of ways.

Probably one of the best methods of spreading the word about your business and connecting with your customers is by having a company blog.

The benefits of a business blog

Blogging is a remarkably simple way of publishing. It’s cheap, it’s easy to do and it’s something that your business can benefit from in so many ways:

• Higher search engine rankings — generally speaking, a regular stream of new articles is considered appealing by the search engines, who will pay more attention to your blog or website, ranking you more highly accordingly. The more pages you write, the more there is to be found. However, it’s an exercise in quality not quantity!
• Gaining trust — by writing informative and authoritative articles, over time you’ll build confidence, trust, respect and a sense of “expert status” around your business.
• A sense of community — you’re engaging with your customers in a conversational style that’s difficult to replicate by other means. And by allowing people to comment on your articles, you’re encouraging those people to participate, giving them a reason to return. In simple terms, a blog is a great opportunity for you and your staff to quickly share ideas, and maybe also get some feedback from your customers.
• Better communications — a blog is essentially a publishing platform, where you control the content of your articles, and also when those articles get published.
• Cost effective — in terms of communications, blogging is very low cost but has the potential for a high ROI (Return On Investment).

Is a blog a CMS (Content Management System)?

Maybe you’ve heard the acronym / term CMS before, but didn’t quite know what it meant. Yes, a blog is a kind of Content Management System, simply because you use a blog to manage content!

This very website is powered by WordPress, which is probably the worlds most successful blogging software. There are other kinds of CMS, some of which are very sophisticated. Some of which are even free, like WordPress.

What are the advantages of a CMS compared to a website?

When you have a blog (which, as I mentioned previously is a CMS), you have the option to manage many of the day-to-day aspects of owning a website yourself, such as: adding new pages, editing existing pages, replying to comments, adding images, links to websites and more.

Assuming you have the right tools and skills, your blog can be as sophisticated as most websites.

Much like Google Alerts, Google Trends lets you track and monitor brand names, products, services and people in the news. However, where the two differ is in end result; Google Trends leverages the Google News service to highlight those trends over time, with news activities acting as punctuators on a graphical chart.

Compare brands

You can compare multiple items, such as: “Apple, Microsoft, Linux”, Or: “HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Halifax” for example. You even have the option to export your new-found trends as CSV (Comma-Separated Variable) files, to use in Microsoft Excel, or even Google Docs.

The data used to build the graph is taken from Google’s own search engine. So the number of people searching for the keywords you choose to compare defines the properties of the graph itself. In that sense, you can see the relative popularity of certain people, companies and brands over time.

In the news

By having the news items linked into the chart, you get to see what the sources of certain defined spikes and troughs are.

Each news item is listed to the right of the graph as a link, so you can follow those news items up for yourself, to learn more. Additionally, there are charts for regions, cities and languages. Also, you can refine your search by region and by year, offering even more information about those keywords you’re hoping to learn more about.

Google Alerts are a great way to keep track of brand names, products, services and people in the news. Google Alerts sifts through the news to find anything that matches the words or phrases you want to find.

Reputation Management

If you’re a large enough company with products and / or product brands, or you’re a business with a large presence, you might find that Google Alerts could help you keep track of any conversations where your company or brand names feature.

If you’re lucky, people are saying good things about you, which you could otherwise miss out on. On finding these praise-worthy news items, you can follow them up, thank the publishers and use those news items as testimonials, as well as using them within other marketing materials.

However, there’s also the possibility that people are saying bad things about you or your products. Here’s your chance to engage with those people directly and deal with those issues head on.

Tracking industry trends

As an example, I have Alerts sent to me for: “Social Media” and: “Social Networking”, which helps me keep abreast of changes and of new people, emerging technologies et cetera.

If you’re a marketeer, or a business that needs to track trends, you’ll find Google Alerts to be very useful and complimentary to your broader activities.

Once you’ve chosen what you want an alert for, you can have them delivered to you via email at different intervals, such as right away or as compendium once a week.

Social Media Marketing Technology is a website and blog dedicated to social media awareness. And right now, the emphasis is on businesses and their awareness and understanding of social media and it’s potential impact on their businesses.

To that end, I’ve written a book called: The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media, which you can download from this website.

And if you’d like to keep up-to-date with all of the latest social media hints & tips, why not subscribe to the Social Media Marketing Technology blog?